Gypsy Heiress

by Laura London

  When I had finished, I felt warm and wet and a little drowsy. Idly I picked out a two-month-old copy of the Lady’s Monthly Museum and thumbed through a list of paintings to be seen at the National Gallery, read “Anecdotes of Distinguished Females No. 162,” and glanced through “On Domesticity.” A paragraph caught my eye. It read: “The blessed bond of matrimony lifts the fair hand of affection and wipes away the tear of sensibility, exalts the mind, and solaces sorrow by a heavenly mingle of congenial souls. Oh happy state! Avaunt ye scoffers!”

  The door opened and Isabella’s voice came floating over the back of my chair like a hovering wasp.

  “Vincent,” she was saying, “I’ve listened to you counseling patience until I could scream!”

  “Isabella, my beloved.” There was an edge in Vincent’s voice. “He’s within his rights. If you scream, it will only succeed in making us both look foolish.”

  The door closed behind them. The last thing I wanted to do was stand up and make my presence known.

  “We already look foolish!” she snapped. “By heaven, if you were half the man Alex is, you wouldn’t be sitting there telling me to lower my voice and mind my needle! If only I’d married Brockhaven, he’d know how to protect what was rightfully his. He’d know what to do about that gypsy brat. If I had followed my heart…”

  The fire waved into a sheet of blue flame as the opening door sent a cool draft swirling around the room. Someone else had entered my sanctuary, and I hadn’t long to wait before I learned who it was.

  “I could hear your dulcet tones in the hallway, Isabella, though I confess at first I thought one of the peacocks had flown in the window,” said Lord Brockhaven. “How fast you are! Cadal’s barely left to call on you, and here you are already. I suppose he’s told you about the mill?”

  “Yes, he has,” ground out Isabella. “You plan to deliberately and unconscionably destroy the mill as a profitable business venture. How dare you! Grandfather’s will specifies that the mill’s profit is to go to me!”

  “Specifically,” quoted Brockhaven, “ ‘Be there profit from the mill, it should go to my granddaughter, Isabella.’ Since your grandfather placed the management of the mill in the hands of Liza’s guardian, we can assume that your grandfather had the impression that you were better at spending money than making it. What the will doesn’t say is that the mill must be run at a profit. Furthermore, I’m not destroying the mill—I’m modernizing. Eventually the improvements will pay for themselves.”

  “No one is arguing against your improvements, Alex,” said Vincent in a quietly angry voice. “It just needn’t be done in one lump. Enlarging the pond, replacing the stone wheel with iron, leveling the road—these are all things that could be done gradually.”

  “That would be neither safe nor efficient,” retorted Brockhaven with succinct finality.

  At last I began to understand some of the things Mr. Cadal had been trying to tell me about the paper mill. He had been describing to me the changes that Lord Brockhaven had undertaken in its management.

  Vincent’s voice cut into my thoughts. “And what are the mill workers going to do for a livelihood while the mill is closed?” he said. “They live hand to mouth as it is!”

  “They live hand to mouth, do they? How iniquitous!” said Brockhaven with acid amusement. “And who was it that authorized their miserable wage? Yourself, Vincent. But as you’re so concerned about the mill workers, you’ll be pleased to know that I’ve tripled their pay.”

  “You can’t triple pay!” bleated Isabella, as though she was sure that such a thing must be prohibited by law. “How can you do it?”

  “Easily, if the original begins low enough,” Brockhaven informed her.

  “You—you revolutionary! That’s how the French Revolution began, with indulgences like this! Give the rabble a finger and soon they’ll want the whole hand!” Isabella’s voice began to rise and the warm hardwood floor echoed with the stamp of her soft-soled shoes. “It’s sacrilegious too. Yes, it is! The poor are wretched because they’re sinful and lazy, and God punishes them with ill fortune.”

  “That’s it, rave like a maniac,” endorsed Brockhaven affably.

  There was an indignant rustle of skirts, and when Isabella spoke again, her voice shook as though she were trying to bring it under control.

  “I know what you think. That I am horrid and mean and bad-tempered! But I can’t help it, Alex. It’s not in my nature to be good and quiet! When I want something, I must have it! No one ever understands! Truly, Alex, this time I am not being willful. I must have the mill’s profit now! You know how you always say I am too extravagant? Well, I’m trying very hard to be more frugal and that’s why I must have the mill money. If I don’t have it, all the money I’ve spent last August on my summer house will go to waste. That wouldn’t be good, would it?”

  “No doubt I’ll regret asking—but why will the money you’ve spent on the summer house be wasted?” Alex asked.

  “Because I can’t bear to use it. You know how I planned to have teas there on warm days so I could enjoy the view from the hillock. But I hadn’t properly considered. King Road runs right below, and how can one enjoy one’s tea while looking at farmer boys herding their filthy, sloppy cows not thirty yards away? I’ve talked to our architect in London, and he says it would be perfectly feasible to cut a fifty foot tunnel through the hill underneath the present lay of the road and with a few clever plantings of trees we need never be troubled with the traffic again. It’s terribly expensive to do such a thing—hundreds of guineas per foot—and without the mill profits…”

  There was a pregnant silence, and then Brockhaven began to laugh. You could tell from the way he laughed that he was genuinely amused. As a matter of fact, I found it rather funny myself. She had said it just as if she had not a suspicion in the world of the frivolity of her idea. I was so caught up in what I was hearing that I made an inattentive move in my chair which accidentally sent The Lady’s Monthly Museum sliding to the floor with a papery crash.

  I stood immediately. Better to come forward myself than to be dragged in ignominity from my hiding.

  Brockhaven was standing beside Isabella, his eyes still bright with laughter and his lips tilted up at the edges. His long fingers had been cupped on Isabella’s chin, as though in a caress. She turned to face me as he took away his hand, her soft white gown floating around her like spun sugar. White ribbons wound angelically through her golden curls, but the expression on her lovely face was far other than heavenly. Vincent was exactly as I remembered him—tall, gray-eyed, and graceful, with regular, well-schooled features.

  “Good afternoon,” I said, despising myself for sounding so timid. “I was in the room before you entered—I couldn’t seem to find a moment to announce my presence.”

  “I’ll bet you couldn’t, you little sneak,” sniffed Isabella. “So you’ve heard it all! Well, then. I hope you intend to tell Brockhaven that he hasn’t your consent for his ridiculous scheme to ruin a perfectly well-managed business.”

  “According to what I understand from Mr. Cadal,” I said seriously, “Lord Brockhaven doesn’t have to get my consent for any of his actions. I do think, though, that renovating the mill will be a good thing. The incoming road, Mr. Cadal told me, is quite steep, and when there is rain the horses slip dreadfully as they pull heavy wagons in and out. If a gentler grade is put in…”

  Isabella’s furious look killed my words. She strode toward me, raising her hand. I feared that she was going to strike me, but she only snapped her fingers angrily in my face.

  “I care that for your opinion,” she hammered out. “Ignorant chippy! So Alex has made you his puppet already, has he? The least he could have done for you is seen that someone gave you a haircut. You’ve got more wool on your scalp than a yak.”

  Of course it was the worse thing she could have said to me, after the argument I’d just had with Lady Gwen.

  “And yet, I wouldn’t trade what I have for yours,” I sa
id, with a voice contemptuous as any my grandmother had ever used. “Beauty without a heart is like an empty gourd, worth a glance in passing, but a bane to the stew.”

  It didn’t help matters that I set Brockhaven off to laughing again. In the scene that followed, I think I might have hid my head under a seat pillow, if the wing chair had possessed a detachable one. Clearly, Isabella was not a believer in tit for tat, particularly from an upstart like myself. It was amazing how pretty she looked, even yelling at me at the top of her lungs.

  I began to feel sorry I had made her so angry. She was my cousin. I had never known any other, and it would have been so comfortable, if only we could get along. And I remember how she cared for Brockhaven, and it stirred my pity because I understood what a sad fate it was to be barred from his arms.

  Gathering my courage, I walked to her, put my arms around her, and said, “I’m sorry, cousin,” which shocked everyone into silence long enough to allow Brockhaven to whisk me from the room and down the corridor.

  When we were out of earshot, Lord Brockhaven said, “Good thing you took her by surprise or you’d have left the room with Bella’s fingernails imbedded in your cheeks.”

  I stopped and looked up at him. “Does that mean you don’t think she’ll want to be friends with me?”

  Brockhaven studied my face before he spoke. After lunch I had braided my hair in two thick plaits, and my guardian lifted one that had fallen forward and hefted it gently over to my back. At last, he said, “That’s what I mean. Why have you been crying?”

  “You can tell?”

  “Your eyes show it. Did Cadal’s visit distress you so much?”

  I shook my head, and then explained despondently about my argument with Lady Gwen, and how ashamed I was of causing her to be upset. He listened in silence until I was finished, and said, “I’ll talk to her.”

  “Oh, no, no! She’ll think I’ve been complaining to you. Imagine how mortified she would be!”

  “No she won’t. I’ll handle it. Go to your room and wait for her there. No, don’t argue. Go now. And don’t worry.”

  A half hour later to the minute, my bedroom door opened and Lady Gwen entered, flew to my side, and smothered me in a hug.

  “My poor little Liza, why did you not tell me that you didn’t want to have your hair cut because it is the tribal punishment for adultery? Alex has explained it to me, and I understand completely why it would be so repugnant to you. Society will just have to get used to you with knee-length hair!”

  Lady Gwen’s statement was all the more amazing, because I hadn’t told Brockhaven about the gypsy law. I would have been too embarrassed to even think of telling him such a thing. It was evident that Lord Brockhaven knew more about my people than he had allowed me to believe.

  And, as soon as I was given permission to keep my hair, my perverse spirit felt less need to clutch tight every inch of hair. Goudette came in and the three of us talked like three generals planning a military advance, until it was finally decided that if I could bear to have my hair trimmed to waist length (which I discovered I could), and snip some short ends near my face, Goudette could cause it all to curl and Lady Gwen could tell her friends that she couldn’t stand to have me cut it because it was really such lovely hair and perhaps it would set a new fashion, as Goudette called it, à la gypsy!

  * * *

  In the course of the last week, it came to pass that the soirée Lady Gwendolyn had planned to hold at Edgehill became the soirée that Mrs. Perscough planned to hold at Lambelle Manor. The switch had been the product of a Wednesday afternoon visit from Mrs. Perscough, who recommended that it might seem more natural if I was introduced to the local gentry at another house than Edgehill, and besides, it would show right off that Mrs. Perscough considered me an “invitable” in case any doubt of it lingered in the minds of the more socially insecure. It was her opinion that it was best to define me immediately as a sought-after rather than a seeker. Though I might not understand the delicacies of their social world, I got the point and was grateful, not only for the invitation and support, but also because I had found another person to chalk up as a friend in this strange new world.

  I could see why Ellen considered Mrs. Perscough a second mother, for she was a warm and maternal lady, generous and acute. At our first meeting she told me how my father had led her out to dance at the ball her parents had given on her eighteenth birthday, and how all the young ladies had sighed over him, he was so handsome and dark and poetic. How impatient he had been with convention! How bored he had been with the ponderous formalities in his father’s home, and his father’s endless interference in his life! “Mark my words,” Mrs. Perscough’s mother had said. “One of these days the lad will run off, see if he won’t!” And, of course, one day he had.

  That Saturday evening I was finished getting ready for the soirée before anyone else, and went to stand in the entrance hall underneath a red silk banner painted with three animate lions that had belonged to one of Brockhaven’s ancestors, a man who had sailed against Spain for Queen Elizabeth, and who had astonished his attendants by crawling from his deathbed to don armor so that he “could meet death like a gentleman.”

  The hall floor was a pattern of pieced Italian marble in white and black that alternated like the squares of a chessboard. Ellen had told me that it was a thing she liked to do, when she was younger, to hop from side to side in the hall, trying to avoid touching the black squares and pretending that she was Princess of the Saxons and if she could so perform, the cruel Danish pirates had agreed to spare a helpless Saxon village. It was a very childish game, and I can’t think what made me try it, but I was just saving my fifth Saxon village when Lord Brockhaven came down the grand staircase.

  “Good evening,” said Lord Brockhaven in a voice that was, for him, cordial. “Oh, no, don’t stop hopping for my sake. I’ve yet to see a child that can resist jumping on those squares. That’s why Gwen won’t have them waxed.”

  I gathered myself up with dignity and dropped him an icy curtsy which in no way camouflaged my chagrin. I longed for the courage to ask him if he had thought of me as a child when he kissed me under the willow.

  “Very pretty,” he said, crossing the floor to join me, and I wasn’t sure if he was referring to my curtsy, the new cut of my hair, or the dress I wore.

  My gown was a soft white, trimmed at the bodice in gold Brussels lace and at the hem with braiding, with an overskirt embroidered in glittering golden threads. Lady Gwen had spent twenty minutes last night at dinner discussing what jewelry would be fetching and appropriate for me to wear to the soirée, and she had ended by choosing a small pearl hairpin that Ellen had received as a confirmation present. Lady Gwen herself had affixed it to a thick curl above my ear. After she had left, I had looked in the mirror, and thought how Ellen’s pin matched my dress well, both artfully demure, soft and subtle, and revealing instead of colorful and concealing like the clothes I had been raised in. I had pulled the pin from my hair and replaced it with one of my own: a crescent moon of hammered gold and uncut topaz gems that had belonged to my mother.

  I should have known that Lord Brockhaven would notice it at once. Reaching up his hand, he touched the golden ornament and said, “That you didn’t borrow from Ellen.”

  “No, I didn’t. I suppose you don’t approve of such things.”

  “That depends whether it’s on my ward,” he said, viewing me with mocking eyes, “or on my mistress.” He lifted one of the curls that Goudette had labored so lovingly over and said, “It’s beautiful. Like the woman who wears it.”

  A graceful compliment was the last thing I expected from him, and it threw me completely off stride. In a feeble way, I replied, “It’s kind of you to say so,” though I suppose my eyes said much more. It was extraordinary, the power he had to send my emotions into fierce confusion, and produce in me happiness and pain and languor by turns as though he had poured down my throat dose after changing dose of potions that captured and usurped my will. Th
e fancy frightened me, as did the feelings that came with it, and to compensate, I told myself to stop being foolish, and reminded myself that I was unused to young men and gorgio manners, and that I must stop letting myself be overset by Brockhaven’s smallest twist of whim. Suddenly I wished I had confided to Ellen about the kiss.

  “Then you aren’t going to ask me to change it?” I said with a forced smile, to make some remark, any remark.

  “Did I say that? I’m afraid, my girl, that you look more like you’re about to appear as chief goddess and love idol at a pagan fertility rite, than an unassuming young female endeavoring to attend an evening with the cream of the local squirearchy.”

  My smile was more natural as I said, “From what I’ve learned from Ellen, the aforementioned unassuming young females not only assume a lot more than their parents credit, they also know a lot more as well!”

  “Or,” suggested Brockhaven sardonically, “so they assume.”

  * * *

  Lambelle Hall was a red-brick manor house built early in the last century and much refurbished in the last ten years by Mrs. Perscough for the comfort of her large family. The entrance hall was filled with baskets of flowers, and the wainscotted hallways were redolent of beeswax and lemon polish, and lined with large oil paintings in the style of Stubbes that portrayed the ponies ridden and loved by the young Perscoughs. It was a lovely, homey place, and yet my stomach knit into knots as we reached the long drawing room door, and our party was announced by a footman, whose stentorian tones had probably qualified him for the post. My fingers curled involuntarily, and Robert, who was escorting me, said, “Brace up, my girl! Where’s that brave gypsy spirit?”

  “At Edgehill, I think. Let’s go back and look for it.”